


Marking

by wanderingsmith



Category: due South
Genre: M/M, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 02:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3273758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingsmith/pseuds/wanderingsmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It didn't occur to him in the depth of January that it was becoming too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marking

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I ain't got no money, and nobody'd be daft enough to pay me for this. As it is thought, so let it be said; you make the toys, I play with 'em.
> 
> This was written god only knows when. Probably around 6 years ago... just found, looking quite complete enough for me, albeit UST. And since this year's resolution was 'Post what is complete'.. well. here you are. ..any of you that still are around reading DS fic :)

Fraser threw himself off the edge of the roof, seeing the dark glisten of ice where his boots were about to land and automatically loosening and tightening muscles to control the anticipated skid. He could hear Ray running flat out in the alley below, shouting imprecations at their prey. Saw the young man ahead of him suddenly trip, and calmly shouted "Ray", knowing without needing to think that his partner would know to come up the fire escape to Mirandize another apprehended miscreant.

####

No, it wasn't until the dog end of March, wet and bone-chilly, dessicated grey hillocks a parody of snow, that he found himself laying on his cot and fighting a morass of grimness.

There was no point even thinking; paperwork or statue-duty hardly made a difference. Fraser'd take whichever Turnbull didn't.

Diefenbaker whined and he finally made himself rise, still wondering faintly if this was all his life had become.

####

It took another day and the whiff of scent trailing a passing tourist to wake a sudden aching craving in his body.

Not for the oily junk food, but for his partner.

He'd been aware, at some level, that missing Ray had to be part of the darkness swallowing him, but the descent into deathly mental silence had happened so quickly that he'd had precious little time to reason. 

Now that he'd become aware, though, he found the growing hollow within him calling for the presence of his friend. For warmth and teasing, energy forcing his own to respond, and that flashing mind drawing his joyfully entranced attention.

All keeping away the emptiness that was his life outside of Ray's circle of effect.

Ray had only been gone a week; the anti-terrorism training he was attending was scheduled to last another week. 

Another week... Fraser wasn't by nature melodramatic, but during this year with Stanley Raymond Kowalski, he'd found himself relaxing the tight control he hadn't really been aware he'd always kept on himself. Enough that he could feel self-pity attempting to take a foothold in him, now.

He knew very well a week would be no more than a few days of loneliness; but there was an unpleasant hollow in his belly, a faint whisper plaintively saying that whenever he cared about people, they always left. Ray owed him no promise, nor would such actually keep him safe and always at Fraser's side. 

He was a strange stranger in an essentially hostile land. The years of his life were rolling faster every month that felt like a week when he thought back on it. The RCMP had shown no sign of forgiving him in almost 3 years. He had only casual acquaintances and co-workers. 

The Territories were terribly far away, and closed to him for all but short visits. 

All but one thing in his life was shallow and distant; his partner, his *friend*, was the only close bond he had.

And he had to wonder, discovering he'd built up an ever more detailed image of Ray in his mind's eyes, how the peace and unspoiled nature of his home would bear up against being the focus of Ray's enthusiasm; and caring.

Dismissing the disconcerting thought of that dilemma for a day when it was germane, he concentrated on the wiry pollack dancing and laughing in his mind. Spinning in place and gesticulating, his clothing changing every few seconds as though Fraser were replaying and engraving every single memory he had. Humour morphed to that serious expression that made Fraser's heart lift, eager to hear what sobering thought that quicksilver mind had assembled from seemingly incomprehensible data. Sadness, exhaustion; anger even. They were all part of the man who gave Fraser's life meaning.

Feeling faintly guilty for not only having the thought, but having it on duty and while representing Canada to the passersby, Fraser made sure to use some of that wandering control when the mental slideshow stopped on a rare sight of Ray without a shirt. No doubt gleaned from a few occasions where they had had to change after duty made an unacceptable mess of their apparel. He forced his attention to skim past the chest, wiry strength and a sprinkling of almost invisible hair a pale colour that could be whitened brown or an actual variation on non-artificial blond. Past arms he'd felt the power of, lifting him after falls, the skin looking smooth and beautiful. 

Instead, he allowed himself to gather every memory of that strange tattoo. Curved and waved, and perhaps even a little stretched, by the muscles over which it had long ago been laid; the colours faded slightly. A mark on his body which Ray had chosen; perhaps as a salute to his love of cars, or even to his father, who taught it to him. As such, a part of his mind as much as of his physical self.

He imagined tracing it with a gentle finger; knowing there would be nothing to feel, regardless of the messages his mind received.

Too late, Fraser pulled his thoughts back and deliberately clothed the man smiling serenely among his invasive thoughts. Pulling himself back with sharp self-recriminations. Not that that kept the memory from replaying. In half an hour, when he got off duty, he would rub his index fingertip against his thumb, foolishly trying to remember the touch.

Suddenly the vision of that fingertip, resting in the curves of the 'C' to Champion, filled his mind; isolated and rotated and zoomed, the whorled skin of his finger on the now-transparent ink-infused skin.

And another fingerprint replaced it, in office ink, smudged from imprecise application on the back of a stained requisition form. 

Out of his complete confusion that day, wondering if he was mad or if there could possibly be such a vast conspiracy, let along set against *him*, he'd kept copies of all his 'proof' before he'd gone to see Lieutenant Welsh. Somehow, he still had them. Could see them resting in that innocuous, worn, leather pouch in his bottom left desk drawer.

No matter how intimate he were allowed, he could never touch Ray as deeply as the man had done him that very first day. From that first smile and hug of welcome, to stepping in front of a gun for him, the unwilling attraction had only made Fraser's confusion that much more agonizing. Bad enough to lose his friend, but to have to suspect this new Ray who touched him so easily and deeply... No, it had not been a good day.

But there had been many good days since then, and though he trusted his memory, still, perhaps a more concrete link would help soothe the oft-abandoned child in him.

That fingerprint, hearkening to their meeting, to the fingers that made it briefly touching Fraser's neck during that hug, and a symbol of Ray's mark on his life, his heart, his very soul. 

Not on his arm, no, that would be entirely unbefitting such an ethereal, idealistic dedication. No, there could be only one proper placement -seeing as on his forehead, to represent his soul, was socially unacceptable-. His chest, over his heart, on the other hand, was entirely private. The few people who might see him bare-chested long enough to notice the rough half-inch of inked ridges on his admittedly pale skin would either not care, or be worthy of the truth. ..Couched in some form or other.

Already Fraser could feel the gloom lifting with that token of the anchor in his life filling his thoughts. A week was no time at all. Soon Ray would return. Warmth and energy would return to his life. Challenge and reassurance, arguments and someone who touched him with care and who accepted his touch in return.

And after tonight, he would only need touch his breastbone to be reminded of the mark Ray had left him.


End file.
